No melting pot: immigration comes to Ireland.

The Irish experience of emigration has long been the subject of countless ballads, as well as providing one of the most important ingredients in the North American ethnic cocktail. Emigration, however, is no longer Ireland's problem. Today the country is having to face up to the changing social and political attitudes created by a new and unprecedented phenomenon: a wave of immigration, especially from Eastern Europe and Africa, which has in some instances put a question mark against Ireland's reputation as the country of a hundred-thousand welcomes, and has led to the creation of a new political grouping, the Immigration Control Platform.

The initial impetus for this trend came with the fall of communism, when political and economic upheaval in Eastern Europe and the permeability of the frontiers between these countries and the West led to large numbers of refugees. Many of these were absorbed as cheap labor in the other countries of the European Union, but it was inevitable that some of them should eventually reach the small island on the edge of the continent and ask for asylum. Political instability in Africa has been another factor: In some African countries, such as Nigeria, where there has traditionally been a strong Irish missionary presence, political refugees were encouraged to see Ireland as a safe haven.

In international terms, the Irish problem with immigration is still a small one: The Netherlands, for instance, took in almost ten times more asylum seekers last year than Ireland did. The difficulty is that the increase in the past few years has been substantial in percentage terms; in a country where you almost never saw a black, brown, or yellow face, there are now visible pockets of immigrants in a number of narrowly defined areas: the inner city of Dublin, where rents are still cheap; Wexford, home to a major ferryport where illegal immigrants enter by the dozen from France, hidden in freight trucks; and Shannon, where asylum seekers have traditionally tried to slip off planes.

The Irish Department of Justice, which has primary responsibility for managing asylum seekers, does not give figures for their countries of origin. Unofficial estimates suggest that Nigerians account for around 30 percent, with Romanians making up about a fifth. The total number of applications is now running at about 4,000 a year; six years ago, it was less than 40.

The problem is exacerbated by two factors. One is the slowness with which the Department of Justice deals with asylum applications: some applicants have been waiting six years for a decision. The other is the fact that, until a decision is made, asylum seekers are not allowed to work, even in the low-pay areas in which, at the moment, there is a conspicuous labor shortage in Ireland. The result is that they have to be fed and housed out of public funds, and this in turn leads to semipublic mutterings of resentment, and worse: There have been isolated, but worrying, outbreaks of raw racism, particularly in Dublin, where Africans in particular have on occasion been set upon and beaten.

In Cork, a schoolteacher, Aine Ni Chonaill, has established the Immigration Control Platform. A year earlier, she had stood on an anti-immigration platform in her Cork constituency, garnering a paltry 293 votes; but recent publicity for her organization, including a major appearance on the chart-topping Gay Byrne TV show, ensures that her influence will continue to grow. She argues strongly that her policy is not ethnically based. "I don't care what nationality, class, or life-style they come from. They are all nonnationals and there is no room for more. A scattering of exotica is fun; it brightens up our lives. But the days when it was limited to that are long past."

There are probably more people who agree with her in private than are prepared to say so in public, and there is a real danger that administrative confusion and delay, compounded by a lack of political leadership, may allow such sentiments to fester. From former President Mary Robinson to current President Mary MacAleese, and increasingly spokes-people for the churches, voices have been raised to defend the human and social rights of these immigrants, and to remind us of the welcome that was offered our own emigrants in many other countries for a hundred and fifty years or more. In the absence of real political leadership, however, this may not be enough.

The Irish experience of immigration has, up to now, been extremely limited, not least because the economy, pre-Celtic tiger, simply had little work to offer, even to its own people. Government policy in the late 1930s and 1940s, as new research is now making clear, effectively barred many European Jews from seeking asylum in Ireland. In 1956, an influx of refugees from Hungary was briefly accommodated; the experience was not a success, and many of them eventually went to the United States. In 1969, there was an influx of Catholics from Northern Ireland, following the destruction of many nationalist areas in Belfast. More recently, small colonies of Vietnamese boat people have been established. The most recent immigrants, however, regardless of how small their numbers may be, will test Ireland's reputation, and its public attitudes, as none of their predecessors have done.

John Horgan, a long-time contributor to Commonweal, teaches journalism at the Dublin City University.